Ray Gosling, who has died aged 74. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

Ray Gosling, the former BBC presenter, gay rights activist and maker of films and radio documentaries covering what he called "soft news about caravans, allotments, sheds", has died.

The journalist, who was 74, died on Tuesday at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, the city which he moved to in his twenties and to which he would become deeply attached while he went on to become a familiar face on BBC, Granada and later Channel 4.

He was given a suspended prison sentence in September 2010 after admitting wasting police time for falsely claiming on a programme to have killed his dying partner.

But a friend, Dave Bishop, who was helped by Gosling to stand as a candidate for the Bus Pass Elvis party in a number of Westminster elections, said that he hoped Gosling's creative output would be his greatest legacy.

"I hope he is remembered for all the great stuff he did on television," said Bishop, who added that his friend had been suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and complications relating to it..

"It's a sad night for Nottingham. He really was a great guy."

Born in Northampton, Gosling left to attend Leicester University before dropping out to become involved in the music business as the manager of a band and then moving to London to take up a factory job.

At 21, he wrote a memoir of his young life, Sum Total, which was a modest success at the time and was republished in 2004.

Alongside his writing, Gosling had been active in gay politics since the 1950s, and was a campaigner on the issue even as his profile on television and radio increased in the 1960s and 70s. In later years, he set up a website, Gay Monitor, with Allan Horsfall, who co-founded the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in 1964.

Gosling declared bankruptcy in 2000 after failing to meet tax bills and moved into sheltered accommodation but continued to work on projects including a film about his bankruptcy and another about his move into a home. He also continued to contribute to the east Midlands version of the BBC magazine show Inside Out, and it was on this programme in February 2010 that he falsely claimed to have smothered his lover as he lay dying of an Aids-related illness in hospital in the 1990s.

Gosling later repeated the claims and was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder 36 hours after the original programme aired. A six-month investigation found no evidence that Gosling had killed anyone, and he was charged with wasting police time.

A spokesman for Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust confirmed that Gosling had passed away.